This book is designed as a programmer's guide for the System Management Agent, which provides access to system components that have been defined according to the Desktop Management Interface (DMI) standard. These components can be hardware or software in the system that have been defined in the Management Information Format (MIF). Although the DMI itself is protocol-independent, the System Management Agent can manage any DMI-enabled components in the system and translate the MIF information into SNMP management information bases (MIBs).